Absurd verdicts

Posted: 02 May 2014 @ 00:10

CONFUSION reigned on Monday outside the court in Minya, southern
Egypt. The judge, Saed Youssef, sentenced 683 men to death, among
them the Muslim Brotherhood's spiritual leader, Mohamed Badie. At
the same time, Judge Youssef commuted 492 earlier death sentences
to life imprisonment. The Brotherhood's brief spell in power under
Mohamed Morsi was ended with the help of the military in July last
year. Since then, reprisals have been severe. The cause of the mass
sentencing was what amounted to an uprising in Minya, the
provincial capital in August, in which several churches and police
stations were targeted, and a policeman was killed. Many of the
accused, possibly up to 60 per cent, say that they were not even
present. Mr Badie was known to be in Cairo. Witnesses were not
called, and defence lawyers boycotted the trial in protest at not
being allowed to defend their clients. An Amnesty International
spokesman, Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, said: "The court has displayed a
complete contempt for the most basic principles of a fair trial and
has utterly destroyed its credibility. It is time for Egypt's
authorities to come clean and acknowledge that the current system
is neither fair nor independent or impartial."

A bizarre element in the affair is that most of those sentenced
to death are still at liberty. The New York Times
interviewed Mohamed Abdel-Wahab, aged 60, a head teacher. When
first he heard that he had been accused of taking part in the mob
violence, he went to the police to point out to them what was
clearly a mistake. He has had serious heart surgery and walks with
difficulty. The police insisted that the charges were correct - and
then let him return home. He came back from a party on Monday to
learn from his weeping wife that he had been sentenced to death.
"We are living in absurdity," he said.

The rule of law is a vital element in any functioning state.
When the courts are used for blatant political intimidation, there
is no independent authority to which a citizen can appeal. It is
gratifying that there have been strong protests from the
international community. The awkwardness of a democratically
elected Islamist government in Egypt stretched the ethical fibre of
the liberal world, and this accounted for some of the relief when
it was overthrown last summer. But the brutality with which the
Muslim Brotherhood was suppressed coloured relations with the newly
appointed regime. This latest example shows that the Egyptian
government remains determined to discourage dissent. (Also on
Monday, a left-leaning protest group was outlawed.)

The Egyptian foreign minister, Nabil Fahmy, happens to be
visiting Washington to appeal for funds that were frozen during
last year's unrest. It is to be hoped that the White House - which
said that the Minya verdict "defies even the most basic standards
of international justice" - will use the opportunity to remind
Egypt of those standards.

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